From Primitives to Primates: A History of Ethnographic and primatological analogies in the study of prehistory

387 Pages·2014·7.83 MB·English

by  David Van Reybrouck

V
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n David Van Reybrouck

R
e
s Where do our images of early hominids come from? In this fascinating in-depth y From Primitives
e study, David Van Reybrouck demonstrates how input from ethnography and b
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t primatology has deeply influenced our visions about the past from the 19th century o
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to this day – often far beyond the available evidence. Victorian scholars were keen
c to Primates
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to look at contemporary Australian and Tasmanian aboriginals to understand the
i enigmatic Neanderthal fossils. Likewise, today’s primatologists debate to what
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extent bonobos, baboons or chimps may be regarded as stand-ins for early human
A history of ethnographic and
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ancestors. The belief that the contemporary world provides ‘living links’ still
goes strong. Such primate models, Van Reybrouck argues, continue the highly F
o primatological analogies in the
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problematic ‘comparative method’ of the Victorian times. He goes on to show
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how the field of ethnoarchaeology has succeeded in circumventing the major study of prehistory
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s pitfalls of such analogical reasoning.

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v A truly interdisciplinary study, this work shows how scholars working in different r
fields can effectively improve their methods for interpreting the deep past by i
i
m
t understanding the historical challenges of adjacent disciplines.
i i
t
m Overviewing two centuries of intellectual debate in fields as diverse as archaeology,
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ethnography and primatology, Van Reybrouck’s book is one long plea for v
i
e
r understanding the past on its own terms, rather than as facile projections from
s
P the present.
t

o
m David Van Reybrouck (Bruges, 1971) was trained as an archaeologist at the

universities of Leuven, Cambridge and Leiden. Before becoming a highly successful p
o
literary author (The Plague, Mission, Congo…), he worked as a historian of ideas. r
r For more than twelve years, he was coeditor of Archaeological Dialogues. In 2011-12, i
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F he held the prestigious Cleveringa Chair at the University of Leiden.
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ISBN 978-90-8890-095-2
Sidestone Press S
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ISBN: 978-90-8890-095-2 d
e
Bestelnummer: SSP123710001
s
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o
Artikelnummer: SSP123710001 n
9 789088 900952 e

From Primitives
to Primates
Sidestone Press

David Van Reybrouck
From Primitives
to Primates
A history of ethnographic and
primatological analogies in the
study of prehistory
Voor Bekie, Hadewich, Stefaan, Rose-Marie en Sebbe,
die stierven in de sneeuw.
© 2000, 2012 D. Van Reybrouck
Published by Sidestone Press, Leiden
www.sidestone.com
Sidestone registration number: SSP123710001
ISBN 978-90-8890-095-2
Photographs cover: Bushman hunter: Antonella865/Dreamstime.com; Chimpanzee:
Jen7/Dreamstime.com; Background: South Africa - Jason Prince/Dreamstime.com
Cover design: K. Wentink, Sidestone Press
Lay-out: F. Stevens & P.C. van Woerdekom, Sidestone Press
This PhD research was conducted within the PIONIER project ‘Changing Views on
Ice Age Foragers’, financed by The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
(NWO) (project number 030-28-375).
Contents
Preface 9
Introduction 1
1Analogies 13
Analogies in science 13
Analogies in archaeology 14
Models and analogies 16
Analogy as a process 18
The structure of analogy 19
Truth and validity 21
Entities and relations 23
An ideal case 26
Strengthening the analogy 27
The practice of analogy 32
The analogical algorithm 33
A reading grid 36
A corpus of texts 38
A choice of focus 41
Conclusion 42
2Thecomparativemethod 43
Early ethnographic parallels 44
The impact of the three-age system 48
A revolution in antiquarian thought? 48
The dualism of Sven Nilsson and Daniel Wilson 51
Comparative ethnography, folklore and ‘the parallax of man’ 54
An important device 58
The antiquity of man and early social evolutionism 59
The first generation of social evolutionists 60
The function of contemporary savagery 63
Ethnographic enthusiasm 69
Degenerationism and classical evolutionism 71
Degenerationist doubts 72
A second round 74
Morgan’s scheme 79
A zenith of similarity 80
Evolutionist fragmentation 82
Archaeology and anthropology diverge 82
Tylor and the Tasmanians 84
The comparative method’s swan-song: Sollas 89
Divergence of opinion 91
Conclusion 92
3Ethnoarchaeology 95
The dormancy of ethnographic analogy 95
Innovations in the Interbellum 97
Marxism and folklore 101
Postwar pessimism in Britain 105
The situation in the United States 112
Cultural continuity 114
The dilemma of the New Archaeology 115
The new analogy and the New Archaeology 115
Fieldwork and cautionary tales 120
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning or the benefits of testing 124
Between critique and inspiration 128
The heyday of ethnoarchaeology 129
The impossibility of independent testing 130
A thriving subdiscipline 135
Beyond analogy? 138
Place and population: a case study 145
Source and subject-side strategies 154
Decline and fall of ethnoarchaeology 157
The isolation of hunter-gatherer ethnoarchaeology 158
Anthropological doubts about hunter-gatherers 163
Contextual ethnoarchaeology 165
Post-processual archaeology 175
An age of extremes 185
Conclusion 186
The strength of ethnoarchaeological analogies 188
Optimism, pessimism and the redundancy of analogy 192
4Primatemodels 195
The idea of a primate model 195
First episode: from primate anatomy to human anatomy 197
Second episode: from living to fossil anatomy 200
Third episode: from primate behaviour to human behaviour 202
Fourth episode: from primate behaviour to early human behaviour 205
Converging circumstances 210
Baboons 212
Washburn’s baboons: from typical primates to terrestrial specialists 213
The canonization of the baboon model 227
Why baboons? 231
Social carnivores and geladas 234
From subsistence to society: the social carnivore analogy 235
From dentition to diet: the gelada analogy 240
Remote sources and logical consistency 245
Chimpanzees 247
The feminist critique 248
A perfect analogy 253
The seductiveness of similarity 258
Bonobos 259
The disputed bonobo model 259
Bonobo behaviour 265
Entrapped by resemblance 267
The crisis of traditional modelling 268
The weaknesses of referential modelling 269
Phylogenetic comparison or cladistics of behaviour 274
Behavioural ecology 278
Ethoarchaeology 281
The ongoing lure of referential models 284
Beyond single-species models 286
Conclusions 288
The strength of primate models 288
A change in approach 291
Primate modelling, primatology and archaeology 293
5Acomparativehistoryofdebates 297
The comparative method and ethnoarchaeology 297
Projections and processes 297
Ethnoarchaeology and primate modelling 300
The impact of functionalism 300
Archaeologists and primate models 301
Primatologists and ethnographic models 303
Divergent debates 309
Primate modelling and the comparative method 312
Proximity, privilege, projection and paradoxes 312
Differences 316
Similarity but no continuity 317
Conclusion 321
Epilogue 329
References 331
CurriculumVitae 373